


sidereus, belonging to the night sky

by unexpectedchair



Series: The ties that bind [5]
Category: Dungeons & Dragons - All Media Types
Genre: But Is It Really One-Sided (yeah probably), F/F, fellas is it gay to compare a girl youre crushing on to the stars?, sometimes you just gotta lie on a roof and think about things
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-10
Updated: 2020-07-10
Packaged: 2021-03-05 05:47:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 612
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25189684
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/unexpectedchair/pseuds/unexpectedchair
Summary: Ainsel, stuck in Alivar, contemplates her feelings on Istus through the stars.
Relationships: Ainsel/Istus (One-sided)
Series: The ties that bind [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1824715





	sidereus, belonging to the night sky

**Author's Note:**

> this ship started as a joke. i was like 'haha what if' WHOOPS NOW IM SERIOUS ABOUT IT YEEHAW
> 
> in my defense, its not like my dm discourages it.

Ainsel slowly reached upward towards the stars, that night. She climbed onto the roof of Jo's tavern, and she looked up towards the sky. There, in Alivar, a town that is much much dimmer than Palis, Ainsel could look up and see the galaxies swirling above. 

She had heard stories in tomes, about how the gods were like stars. Gleaming bright, shining. Some scholars took that more literally, and interpreted that the stars _were_ the gods. 

Ainsel was glad that evidently, they were wrong. She would hate to exist in a world with a starless sky.

But that night on the roof of Jo's tavern, she wondered about those stars above her, reaching out to them as if to beckon them to entertain her thoughts. She wondered about the gods that she knew, now mortal, no longer stars.

_Heironeous would be bright, she thought, bold, brash. But yet, a shining beacon. The kind of light to guide a lost one home._

_Her Majesty, the Raven Queen, would turn the phrase 'dark star' literal. Quiet, yet noticed by those who needed to notice it. Death is a concept only thought of when it applies, or when it looms, much like that under a 'dark star'._

_Gruumsh_. Ainsel paused. She silently grieved for the god that no one else would know to grieve for. 

_Beory…_

And thinking about Beory made Ainsel think about Istus, which is something Ainsel tried very hard very often not to think about. To think about someone so often meant they mean something, and Ainsel could under no circumstances have Istus _mean_ something to her.

She remembered her conversation with her familiar, just before this nightmare began, and she closed her eyes.

Perhaps a little indulgence wouldn't hurt.

"You would be soft," she murmured to the wind, as if she was afraid Istus was listening, "You would be prominent in the night sky, but you wouldn't be noticed by many. Yet.. you'd be the center of a constellation."

(It was a form of prayer, to whisper this to the open sky, and Ainsel knew that.)

Ainsel closed her eyes and let the stars fade from view. That was the whole problem, wasn't it?

Whenever Ainsel pictured Istus, she was at the center of the room. The center of the table, the center of the group, the very reason they had begun on this quest, and now, the center of Ainsels imagined constellatio. 

And Istus would never, ever see Ainsel the same way.

 _Damnit, Andy,_ Ainsel ran a hand through her hair, feeling the brown streak from that nights failed attempt to go back to her old self, _You were supposed to be the romantic of the two of us. You always talked about how you couldn't wait to fall in love._

And really, it was right out of one of Antoinettes old books. A monster falls in love with a goddess. What a thrilling romance, indeed.

Ainsel was more practical than that. She knew fairytales and imagined novels had very little merit in the real world, and whatever merit there was was often reserved for the few.

She thought of the statue of Alivar Baern. 

_"The ties that bind don't last indefinitely; they are borrowed, and twisted, and, eventually, cut."_

In that sentiment Ainsel found solace. She knew whatever.. semblance of a relationship she had built with Istus would be severed as soon as Istus was immortal again.

Ainsel opened her eyes.

_That doesn't stop me from wishing she was here, though, now does it?_

She again reached out to the stars. Specifically, a point in the void where she thought that if Istus was a star, she would be.


End file.
